Eugenica latina? : criminologia e sterilizzazioni femminili in Italia a fine '800

This paper proposes a revision of the concept of Latin eugenics by bringing in new elements of knowledge which help us to understand the Italian context more clearly. The spread of so-called "negative eugenics" in Italian criminology, aimed at eliminating people deemed "unfit", and the influence of these ideas on the wider American and German contexts, have so far been underestimated by historians. In the reactionary political climate at the end of the nineteenth century, the Italian Parliament discussed the imposition of indeterminate imprisonment. Similarly, there were experiments involving the deportation of prisoners to the colonies and the sterilisation of women. The liberal turn at the start of the twentieth century brought an end to these proposals, and opened the way for "positive", pronatalist eugenics deemed typical of the Latin model. [Publishers' text].